Always the Little Things
by La. Bel. LM
Summary: Musings on a certain married man's insanity. Or is he really as insane as he thinks? You be the judge. COMPLETE.


ALWAYS THE LITTLE THINGS

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When was it, exactly, that he had lost his sanity? When was it, that he had given up all coherent thought to instead spend his time finding ridiculous amounts of happiness in the most trivial things of human life? It might not seem so obvious when one first encountered him (his outward appearance could be quite misleading on that front) but underneath, he was an absolute turmoil of utter insanity. One had only to ask him the right questions—and only when said person was under a _very_ heavy truth serum, as it is a noted fact that he would very much rather hex off his own hand than admit such inane things willingly.

One might start off with a very simple question; What was his favorite sound?

Well, it definitely wasn't a cheering crowd, or a baby's laughter, or even the sound of an annoying wonder-boy Gryffindor falling off his broom with a resounding thud. It wasn't, in fact, anything profound at all. It was just her—brushing her teeth. This was, of course, something every normal person in the world did every morning. But for him, it was something more; it was the sound he woke up to. Every day, at whatever pre-determined time his internal clock had set, he would wake up as though from a coma (so deep was his sleep these days), and do nothing but lay there for that exact two minutes and twelve seconds it took her to clean, rinse and spit. And every day, for that exact two minutes and twelve seconds, his entire world included nothing more than the sound of his wife, brushing her teeth in their 12-by-18 white-tiled bathroom, just like every other normal human being in the world, and he wouldn't be able to think of any sound he'd rather hear for all the gold in Gringotts.

Now, in all honesty—did those sound like thoughts that should be going through the head of any self-respecting male? _He_ certainly didn't think so. But if that wasn't convincing enough, one only had to continue their questioning to unlock his true mental derangement.

For instance—what was his favorite smell?

No, it was not her perfume, not her hair, not anything else that a sensible man might find pleasing about a woman. It was, in fact, burned toast. That's right. His favorite smell in the entire world was burned toast. After all, that was what she fixed him for breakfast every morning. Or at least, _attempted_ to fix him. For, as impossible as it might seem, she who could have replicated—and most likely improved—any brew in a Masters level Potions text at the terrifyingly young age of thirteen, couldn't, for the life of her, figure out the time it took to place two single slices of bread in a modern electric toaster without burning them to a crisp. Every morning, as he smelled (from the _living room_ for Merlin's sake!) the smoke that undoubtedly billowed from that infernal, muggle contraption, she would yell an apology from the kitchen and he would catch a glimpse of her as she dumped the remains of the ravished bread in the trash with a disgruntled frown. She would then exclaim profusely to him not to worry, and that she was sure she would get it right the next time. And every morning, he would re-assure her that he did not, in fact, marry her for her culinary achievements—or lack thereof. She would laugh, and peak her curl-haloed head through the open doorway with a smile three sizes too big for her little, round face. Then he would spend yet another breakfast, crunching away on his flavorless bran cereal, feeling nothing but grateful that his darling wife cared enough for her grouchy, irritable husband to waste a part of her every morning to make him toast. And for absolutely no reason at all. He had never even asked. She just woke up one day, decided that it was her husband's life ambition to have toast for breakfast, and that she was the only person in the world who could make it for him.

This was, undoubtedly, only something a mightily unbalanced person would find such comfort in. But if one was _still_ not convinced of his dementia, one must only probe further and all would reveal itself in due course. Perhaps next, a question that was just about as simple as one could possibly conceive; What was his favorite color?

One might naturally assume green, right? Or maybe silver? _Black_?

No—it was blue. The soft, cottony kind of blue that had all but faded completely from that ridiculously fuzzy slipper she dangled under the table every morning as they sipped on their first cup of coffee for the day and she quietly read him the morning headlines.

It would seem only logical then, for one who was an intensely curious and observant kind of person, to follow up with a question that concerned his apparent infatuation with morning. One might ask him—why morning?

Because when early morning was over, he left for work. And then the rest of his day no longer included her.

One might then be confused—after all didn't he and his wife spend time together once business hours were over? So one would ask him—what about the evening?

And he would answer (with a sly smile) that should one continue asking questions, one would more than likely get just as many answers in that category as the first.

At last, one might be able to conclude (after such intense questioning) that he was not, as he so ignorantly thought, suffering from an apparent loss of sanity, but instead from something of a completely different nature—yet, some might say, hardly different at all.

He would, of course, be baffled beyond all belief and would, in turn, ask the most obvious question in _his_ mind; What else could it be?

It is then that one would feel oneself under the obligation to relinquish the simplest answer one could possibly conceive;

Why—love, you silly fool.

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FIN.


End file.
